Audience positions

Understandings have changed rapidly of the relationship between art events (their staging, intentionality, dramaturgy, curatorial or design dimensions, as well as aesthetic practices) and the audience (or general public), who make up the target group for them. One of the characteristics of these changes has been the integrated negotiation of a series of new audience positions, which give the audience/visitors a special agency in relation to both the event and each other.

The research group works with new survey formats which are based on these trends in the relationship between audience and art event. This includes seeking out new ways to generate empirical data and knowledge, experiments with formats and media for the discussion and dissemination of the outcomes, and opening research up to new input from the world of artistic practice. The project also includes a critical discussion of potentially problematic aspects, e.g. user involvement as a solution to underfunding.

The Audience positions research group is based on the question: How can we develop research practices that benefit from and reflect the impetus and innovative strength found in the renewal of the relationship with audiences that has taken place in recent years?

Attached researchers

Professor Frederik Tygstrup
Associate professor Jens Hesselager